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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees
Hurricane Emily Approaches; Karl Rove and the CIA Leak; London Bombers in Pakistan; Cell Phones and Cancer; Putting Saddam on Trial; Botox as Cosmetic Aid
Aired July 18, 2005 - 19:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you, Lou.
Hi, everybody. Anderson is off tonight. I'm Heidi Collins.
Hurricane Emily makes landfall and moves on to another target. It's 7:00 p.m. on the East Coast, 4:00 p.m. in the west. 360 starts now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COLLINS (voice-over): Emily's wrath. The hurricane pounds the coast of Mexico. Tonight, the latest on U.S. landfall.
The CIA leak scandal. Tough new words from the president today. But is he really circling the wagons to protect Karl Rove? We'll have the latest.
Cell phones and brain cancer. What's the 411? Tonight, 360 M.D. Dr. Sanjay Gupta looks at the connection.
And the latest on how they're using Botox, bikini lines, under your arms, your feet, where else? Well, tonight, it's no longer a private matter.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COLLINS: Good evening, everybody. I'm Heidi Collins. Anderson's off gallivanting somewhere, not, we hope, on the Caribbean coast of Mexico, off which Hurricane Emily bounced back out to sea today, threatening to build up strength and then have another go at a stretch of land somewhere south of Brownsville, Texas.
We say Emily bounced off the Yucatan, but the people in the resorts down there would probably put it another way. CNN's Karl Penhaul reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Storm-driven waves crashed into the Mexican coast as Hurricane Emily began to pound, tourist havens along the Yucatan peninsula. The brunt of the 135 mile-an-hour hurricane battered Playa del Carmen in the wee hours of Monday.
The winds were still howling when buddies, Steve Self and Clive Higgins (ph), both from Oklahoma and both with experience facing nature's fury, went to check the damage. With the aid of a flashlight, they see trees have been snapped and palm-leaf roofs ripped off. But it's nowhere near as bad as they expected.
STEVE SELF, EXPERIENCED HURRICANE EMILY: These hurricanes, they got nothing on tornadoes. You can sleep through it.
PENHAUL: Along the beach of the five-star resorts, hotel managers were taking no chances. Hours before Emily hit, guests were evacuated from their rooms to more secure ballrooms and meeting rooms converted into emergency shelters.
Texans Pam and J.D. Chambliss wished this beachside bar would open and serve them a stiff drink after a hard night.
(on-screen): Could you hear it? Could you feel it?
PAM CHAMBLISS, EXPERIENCED HURRICANE EMILY: Kind of like a little witch screaming.
J.D. CHAMBLISS, EXPERIENCED HURRICANE EMILY: You could hear it howling.
P. CHAMBLISS: And howl.
J. CHAMBLISS: And some things -- it started leaking. The rain started...
(CROSSTALK)
P. CHAMBLISS: Yes, we were a little bit...
(CROSSTALK)
J. CHAMBLISS: It started leaking pretty bad. And things started falling.
PENHAUL (voice-over): They say they were crammed into their hotel's movie theater with some 300 other guests.
(on-screen): Did it get pretty sweaty in there?
P. CHAMBLISS: A little sweaty, yes. We were a little sweaty. No air conditioning.
J. CHAMBLISS: It was hot.
PENHAUL (voice-over): Authorities say trees were ripped up by their roots or snapped. But they reported little major damage to buildings and said nobody was injured.
The wind certainly turned this tourist Mecca into a mess. But workmen say they can complete the clean-up within a week. The Selfs and the Higgonsons (ph) still have a week's vacation left, and they're confident things can only get better.
S. SELF: I can't call it quits, just because it started out bad.
PENHAUL: And with the hurricane behind them, they and thousands of other tourists are looking forward to another day at the beach.
Karl Penhaul, CNN, Playa del Carmen, Mexico.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COLLINS: For the latest now on what this swirling buzz saw of a storm may be doing in the next few hours, we turn to CNN meteorologist Jacqui Jeras in Atlanta.
Hi, Jacqui.
JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Hi, Heidi.
Well, it should be gaining strength over the next couple of hours. It's heading into some warmer waters. And our satellite pictures shows you really fired up across the Yucatan weekend.
And now you can see some of these brighter colors returning as the eye becoming more defines. So those are signs that this is starting to strengthen at this time.
As to the 5 o'clock Eastern time advisory, though, winds were 75 miles per hour, making it a Category 1 hurricane, barely a Category 1 at that.
Forecast track has it right on target here to head into northern parts of Mexico, though Southern Texas still on this cone of uncertainly. So you're still on high alert at this time.
Likely now a Category 2 rather than a 3 before making landfall. Rainfall will be moving in by tomorrow afternoon across Southern Texas, three to five inches into the Rio Valley, but locally heavier (INAUDIBLE) up to a foot of rain possible -- Heidi?
COLLINS: All right, Jacqui. Thanks so much for that. We know you'll have your eye on it. And stay with CNN for the very latest on Emily. As we say, we are your hurricane headquarters.
If it seems to you there have never been so many hurricanes so early in the season, well, you're right, there haven't been, not in number or in ferocity since recording of them began more than a century and a half ago. We're only about six weeks into the official hurricane season, and we've been hammered pretty hard so far.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
COLLINS (voice-over): Arlene, Brett, Cindy, Dennis, Emily, storms so powerful, they not only earned names, but since the beginning of June, all left a wake of devastation as they whirled up the Atlantic.
Not since scientists first started keeping records in 1851 have so many hurricanes developed with such force so early in the year. So what is putting the punch in this particularly alarming hurricane season? Scientists say hurricanes are cyclical.
ED RAPPAPORT, NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER: The Atlantic does goes through multi-decadal periods of hurricane activity. We're in right now at least the beginning years of an upswing in activity. We have been maybe for the past five or ten years.
COLLINS: And scientists point to a number of simultaneous climactic factors feeding the hurricane frenzy that create a near perfect storm for hurricane activity.
First, weaker-than-normal winds that lack enough power to tear apart and dissipate a storm in its beginning stages. At the same time, we're experiencing a phenomenon meteorologists call "the tropical box." Storms form off the coast of Africa and have plenty of time to grain strength before hitting ground days later.
Next, the so-called "Bermuda high." It's a high-pressure system over the North Atlantic that forms a barrier-like wall that pushes hurricanes west toward Florida and the Gulf. Another factor: If the water feels warmer, well, it is. This month, the Atlantic Ocean is two to four degrees warmer than average, leading some to wonder if global warming is a factor.
RAPPAPORT: At this point, it isn't clear if there is a link between global warming and hurricane activity, either in terms of the numbers of storms or in terms of their intensity. In fact, the numbers of hurricanes and typhoons globally over the past numbers of years has not increased.
COLLINS: But not so for this season, say the experts. With more than four months left in hurricane season, they say brace for more hurricane havoc.
RAPPAPORT: We would expect that, in fact, the worst is yet to come in the Atlantic hurricane basin.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COLLINS: The violent weather is not limited to the Atlantic, either. Here's the download on the bad weather in the Pacific where hurricane-strength storms are call typhoons and where today the one named Haitang pretty much brought the island of Taiwan to a standstill.
Coming ashore with heavy rains and winds of greater than 100 miles an hour, at least one person killed. Mudslides were caused and bridges collapsed. And farmers were sent scrambling to save their animals. In 2001, two typhoons cumulatively killed 300 people on Taiwan.
Erica Hill from Headline News joining us now with some of the other stories we're following tonight.
Hi, Erica.
ERICA HILL, CNN HEADLINE NEWS ANCHOR: Hey, Heidi. Good to see you back there.
COLLINS: You, too.
HILL: I'm just grabbing some papers for you, because I'm having a little problem with my teleprompters, so give me a second. I'm going to get you caught up on the news.
We're actually starting out tonight with -- don't mind me not looking at you. It's nothing personal. Demonstrations today in Israel near the Gaza border, a story that we've been following. All this to protest the government's plan to pull out of Gaza and part of the West Bank.
Now, the pro-settler group behind the three-day event had predicted up to 100,000 people would be there. Israeli forces, though, did block some of the buses that were on their way to the demonstration.
On to Birmingham, Alabama. Convicted bomber Eric Rudolph sentenced to two life terms in prison in connection to a 1998 bombing in Birmingham that killed an off-duty police officer and injured a nurse.
The sentence is all part of a deal in which Rudolph also pleaded guilty to three other attacks, including that explosion at the 1996 Olympic Games. Actually, at the Olympic Park here in Atlanta. He, of course, pleading guilty to avoid the death penalty.
In Berlin, Germany, freedom for a man who has been linked to the 9/11 hijackers and the 2003 Madrid bombings. Today, Germany's high court released the Syrian-born German who Spain wanted to extradite. The court says it would be illegal to move him under Germany's constitution, which bars Germans from being extradited against their will.
And around the world, Harry Potter working his magic on the record books. In its first 24 hours, the latest back in the series, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" sold about 9 million copies in the U.S. and Britain. And by the way, the only other book to ever come close to that record pace would be the previous installment of Harry Potter, Heidi. And by the way, finished it yesterday.
COLLINS: Did? I'm still on the last one. It was like 700 pages. So...
HILL: This one's a little shorter. It's like 652. It's a breeze.
COLLINS: Oh, I can handle that one. All right, Erica, we'll see you again in about 30 minutes.
Still to come on 360 now, will Karl Rove get fired for allegedly leaking the identity of a CIA agent? President Bush speaks out about it and, well, seems to tweak his message a bit.
Plus, the London terror investigation. First, Britons were stunned to hear the bombers were one of their own. Now hear what else investigators have uncovered.
And it's not just for wrinkles anymore. You won't believe the bizarre, if not extremely private, places some woman want their Botox. And some say it works. We'll tell you all about the extra benefits.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COLLINS: Tonight, the death toll in the London terror attacks rose to 56. Fifty-two innocent lives cut down by four home-grown bombers. And today, we are learning more about the terrorists. All are from Britain, but it appears they may have a connection to another country.
CNN senior international correspondent Nic Robertson investigates in tonight's "World in 360."
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): Pictures of two men who would become the London bombers arriving at Karachi Airport in Pakistan last year. Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammed Sadique Khan from Leeds, England, going through passport control in November, according to Pakistani officials.
Front-page news in Pakistan, but what were the young men, British citizens of Pakistani origin, doing in that country? Is this the Al Qaeda link British investigators have been talking about?
JALIL ABBAS JILANI, PAKISTAN FOREIGN MINISTRY SPOKESMAN: It would not be a prudent to either prejudge, speculate or to do anything that would prejudice the results of the investigations.
ROBERTSON: Pakistani officials say Tanweer and Khan left on the 8th of February this year. What's not clear, what they did during their visit.
The next place the bombers show up on a publicly-released security picture is here, at Luton Train Station just north of London, an hour and a half before the bombing. With them, the youngest of the bombers, Hasib Hussain, also from Leeds, and Germaine Lindsay, of Jamaican dissent, a recent convert to Islam.
It's what happened before the four suspect bombers got here that remains a mystery. Where did they meet? Who brought the bombs? Once they were here, though, they were on track to kill.
They rode this train, the 7:40 a.m. from Luton to King's Cross. Within half an hour of it arriving on the 7th of July, three bombs would explode. Hussain's would go off on a bus more than an hour after the others. What was he doing? Did his bomb malfunction?
PETER CLARK, ANTI-TERRORIST POLICE: The question I am asking the public is, did you see this man at King's Cross? Was he alone or with others? Do you know the route he took from the station?
ROBERTSON: The number 30 bus has now been removed, but the road remains sealed as police search for more clues. And although home- made explosives have been identified as the material in the bombs, who built them is yet another open question.
SIR IAN BLAIR, METROPOLITAN POLICE COMMISSIONER: What we've got to find is the people who trained them, people who made the bombs, the people who financed it.
ROBERTSON: In Leeds, police are targeting homes of the bombers and focusing much attention on community centers. Thirty-year-old Khan is emerging as mentor to the two younger bombers, Tanweer and Hussain. The question here, was there a mastermind? Is that person planning another strike?
BLAIR: I do feel London could suffer another attack.
ROBERTSON: Germaine Lindsay, the fourth bomber, is the strangest fit in the puzzle so far. Why did he convert to Islam?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think he was at the end of year ten over the six weeks holiday that you get a break from school. And he came back with this totally different attitude.
ROBERTSON: And more significantly, what brought Lindsay from his roots here in Hattersfield into contact with the other three suspected bombers 25 miles away in Leeds is an answer that will likely solve some questions.
Finding an answer to that will shed light on how the cell worked. Beyond all these, though, many, many more questions remain unanswered. What will it take to solve them? The answer is simple, police say, a long time.
Nic Robertson, CNN, London.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COLLINS: Suicide bombers are not so desperate, after all. Here's the surprising download.
A recent study of Palestinian suicide bombers found only 13 percent were raised in poverty. And another report from 2001 shows 54 percent of the Palestinian suicide bombers could read and write. Other studies show they tend to come from supportive families and are well-educated. And one out of five suicide bombers is married.
Still to come on 360, no date yet, but Saddam Hussein will soon go on trial in a case that could soon bring him the death penalty. What complications can we expect though? We'll take a look at that.
Also tonight, are we talking ourselves into trouble? The latest on cell phone dangers.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COLLINS: Yesterday was an historic day in Iraq. The first formal charges against former President Saddam Hussein were announced. His bloody rule began 26 years ago. And when the war began in 2003, he vanished until he was found nine months later. CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin picks up the story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST (voice-over): You'll recall he was found cowering about seven feet underground in a grubby cavern, the so-called spider hole. Since then, Saddam's been held in a secret location in Iraq awaiting justice.
After thousands of Iraqis and more than 1,700 American troops died, and he was replaced with the first-ever democratically elected government, we get to this moment. If the Iraqi court finds him guilty, the former dictator faces a possible death sentence for ordering the massacre of more than 150 people in the Shiite village of Dujail, about 40 miles north of Baghdad, a bloody retribution for an assassination attempt on him there in 1982.
Of course, Saddam has been connected to many other crimes against humanity. The chemical weapons attack in 1988 which killed about 5,000 Kurds, for example, or some 150,000 lives lost when Saddam crushed a Shiite rebellion in southern Iraq in 1991.
BAKHTIAR AMIN, FORMER HUMAN RIGHTS MINISTER: Half a million people in Kurdistan were perished in the hands of Saddam and his henchmen since they came to power.
TOOBIN: The special tribunal is scouring the country, digging up mass graves, talking to witnesses, looking for enough evidence to bring charges against the former dictator. Each new allegation could result in another trial.
The first trial could happen at the end of the summer. And if Saddam is found guilty and sentenced to death, it could also be the last. That said, despite what's been reported about Saddam's arrogance and bloodthirsty regime, trying a war criminal is far more complicated than you'd guess.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COLLINS: And Jeffrey Toobin joining us now.
So what do you mean by that? Complicated how? What do you see happening?
TOOBIN: We all say, oh, well, he's obviously a dictator, he's obviously responsible for all of this. Where is the witness who says, "He told me to have all these people killed"? Where is the document that he signed?
You know, they can do that. They can find that evidence, but it's not easy.
COLLINS: What about American officials being called to testify? Is that normal? Is that something that could happen? TOOBIN: Well, it could happen. You remember, there's the famous photograph of Donald Rumsfeld meeting with Saddam Hussein in the '80s. You know, he's probably not going to get acquitted, but he could embarrass the United States in the course of the trial. And surely, he's going to try every way he can.
COLLINS: Right. And we know that he's going to be tried by a panel of five Iraqi judges. Why not an international war crimes tribunal?
TOOBIN: Well, you know, that was one of the things that was discussed. But the American administration, the Bush administration, doesn't care for international organizations in that way. They oppose the criminal court.
And the idea is, Iraqis should be dispensing their own justice to a former Iraqi leader. That's the idea. And we'll see if it works.
COLLINS: They're the ones who suffered.
TOOBIN: They're the ones who suffered. They're the ones who have to understand how awful Saddam was. They're the ones who should be in charge. That's the theory, anyway. And we'll see how it comes off in practice.
COLLINS: All right. Jeffrey Toobin, senior legal analyst tonight. Jeff, thanks.
As far as the fate of Saddam Hussein is concerned, here's a download of a CNN-"USA Today"-Gallup poll released today but conducted at the end of June. The question was, "If Saddam is found guilty of a serious crime, would you support the death penalty for him?" As you can see, 71 percent of those polled would, in fact, be in favor of putting a convicted Saddam to death, 71 percent to 24 percent.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COLLINS (voice-over): The CIA leak scandal. Tough new words from the president today. But is he really circling the wagons to protect Karl Rove? We'll have the latest.
And the latest on how they're using Botox. Bikini lines, under your arm, your feet, where else? Well, tonight, it's no longer a private matter.
360 continues.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COLLINS: Welcome back to 360, everybody. I'm Heidi Collins, in for Anderson Cooper tonight.
To bring you up to speed on a couple of tonight's top stories, Hurricane Emily seems to be regrouping out in the Gulf of Mexico, making ready for another assault on land somewhere south of Brownsville, Texas. Emily made a mess of the resorts of Cancun and Cozumel earlier today, then withdrew to catch a breath.
And in London, the toll in last week's terrorist bombings rose today to 56. Fifty-two victims, four bombers, two of whom British police say made trips to Pakistan before returning to England to set off their bombs.
We all know cell phones can be lifesavers at times, especially if you need to reach someone quickly. But there is a concern that they could also be endangering our lives. While there's no conclusive evidence, some doctors still feel there could be a link between cell phones and brain cancer.
And as 360 M.D. Dr. Sanjay Gupta reports, the family of famed attorney Johnnie Cochran wonders if, indeed, a cellphone had something to do with his death.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: The news of her father's illness opened a wellspring of sadness and fear in Johnnie Cochran's daughter, Tiffany. Her father, relatively young and healthy, struck suddenly by a brain tumor.
TIFFANY COCHRAN, JOHNNIE COCHRAN'S DAUGHTER: It was traumatic, because I thought, well, biopsy, that's not good (INAUDIBLE) MRI. You know, I put two and two together. And I knew it wasn't good.
GUPTA: So she turned to her father's physician, renowned Los Angeles neurosurgeon Dr. Keith Black to answer the question asked by so many when cancer strikes. Why?
COCHRAN: My brother, sister and I went in and talked with him. And you know, we were in tears.
GUPTA: And he offered the family an opinion they found stunning.
COCHRAN: He explained that this time type of cancer is a balance between environment and genetics. But he thought, for my dad, it was more environment. And he said, perhaps, cell phone usage.
DR. KEITH BLACK, CHIEF OF NEUROSURGERY, CEDARS SINAI: My own belief is that there probably is a correlation between the use of cell phones and brain cancer, even though there's no scientific proof.
GUPTA: Dr. Black, whose the head of neurosurgery at Cedars Sinai Medical Center, believes one day science will catch up to what he's already seeing with his own patients.
BLACK: We know that people that use cell phones a lot also complain of headaches, difficulty with concentration, with memory. You know, this is a microwave antenna, so you're essentially cooking the brain when you hold the receiver right next to your brain.
GUPTA: Now, that's a hypothesis that Dr. Howard Frumkin, who studies the relationship between cancer and cell phone use, vehemently disputes.
DR. HOWARD FRUMKIN, EPIDEMIOLOGIST, EMORY UNIVERSITY: The level of energy is so different with a cell phone than it is with a microwave oven or with some of the other big sources of energy that there's really no way to equate the two. They're completely different phenomena.
GUPTA: Still, Dr. Black points out something else that troubles him. Cochran's tumor was on the left side of his brain. He was known to hold the cell phone on that same side.
Dr. Black's experience with his own patients...
DR. KEITH BLACK, CHIEF OF NEUROSURGERY, CEDARS SINAI: We do know that there is a significant correlation between the side that one uses their cell phone on, and the side that you develop the brain tumor on.
GUPTA: Today in the United States, 175 million people use cell phones. Worldwide, the number is 1.6 billion. And according to the FDA, they say this: "There is no hard evidence of adverse health effects on the general public from exposure to radio frequency energy while using wireless communication devices."
One important thing to consider about Johnnie Cochran, he used old-style analogue cell phones for years. Today, most people use digital phones. That's an important distinction, says Black, who says those old phones gave off even more microwave radiation, and may have been more dangerous.
Emory's Dr. Frumkin says the health risks posed by old and new phone technologies are so different, comparing them is almost a case of apples and oranges.
FRUMKIN: The dose of radio frequency energy is much lower with modern digital phones than it was with older analogue phones. So if there is any danger at all from this kind of energy, the danger has diminished with the improvement in technology.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are suing the manufacturer...
GUPTA: But that hasn't stopped some people from taking cell phone claims to court. In 1992, David Reynard filed a suit, alleging his wife's fatal brain cancer was due to cell phone use.
And 10 years later, Chris Newman, a doctor from Baltimore, filed a suit alleging nine years of cell phone use led to his own brain cancer. Both cases were dismissed by courts that found scientific evidence available at the time did not warrant sending them to a jury.
Dr. Frumkin insists there's no way cell phones could have led to Cochran's or anyone else's death, given the scientific evidence.
FRUMKIN: I'm worried that if people hear claim like that, they'll be unduly concerned. This is a very low probability kind of a thing, approaching a zero probability. So I think that there is no evidence to support the idea that Mr. Cochran's brain tumor resulted from cell phone use.
GUPTA: While the FDA says no study has definitively drawn a connection between cancer and cell phone use, the agency points out, there hasn't been any studies to rule one out either. The FDA and Dr. Frumkin agree that more studies should be done protectively.
Tiffany Cochran realizes the question of whether cell phone use was a factor in her father's fatal illness cannot be answered today. Still, she is at peace with his death.
TIFFANY COCHRAN, JOHNNY COCHRAN'S DAUGHTER: He's a fighter. He fought for clients. And he fought that illness, like I'd never seen anyone fight an illness.
GUPTA: And Cochran's friend and doctor, Keith Black, stresses cell phone moderation and using an earpiece to be on the safe side.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, Los Angeles.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COLLINS: We brought this story to the attention to the wireless phone industry, and they had this response. Quote: "Unfortunately, this type of claim is not new. This is an issue that should be guided by science. And public statements that ignore the enormous body of available scientific research, or fail to contribute to it do not serve the public's interest. Just last month, the American Cancer Society, in conjunction with Discovery Health Channel and "Prevention" magazine published its top 10 cancer myths. Wireless phone use ranked eighth."
Still to come tonight on 360: The continuing grand go-around about who said what to whom and when. The Karl Rove business, and where, if anywhere, it may lead.
Also, tonight, we thought this stuff helped remove wrinkles, but you may be surprised by what else Botox can do and the bizarre places where some women want it. Yeah.
Plus, 2,000 years of history, meet a modern daredevil. We'll talk, one-on-one, with the skateboarder who made a great jump over the Great Wall.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COLLINS: Today, President Bush weighed in on the mounting scandal involving his top political adviser, Karl Rove, and the unmasking of CIA agent Valerie Plame. "Time" magazine reporter Matt Cooper told CNN he first learned the identity of the agent from Rove, but he adds, Rove never used her exact name. Does that mean Rove did anything wrong? Here's what the president had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don't know all the facts. I want to know all the facts. The best place for the facts to be done is by somebody who's spending time investigating it. I would like this to end as quickly as possible, so we know the facts. And if someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COLLINS: What may be telling is that two years ago, the president said anyone in the White House who leaked that information would be fired. He did not say they had to be guilty of a crime.
So why the change? Well, joining us tonight from Boston is former presidential adviser David Gergen. David, hello.
DAVID GERGEN, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL ADVISER: Hello there, Heidi.
COLLINS: And from Austin, Texas, Wayne Slater, author of the book on Karl Rove, "Bush's Brain." Hello to you as well, Wayne. Thanks for being here, both of you.
David, I want to start with you, if I could. In June of 2004, the president pledged to fire anybody involved in a leak, as we have said here, not just those who committed a crime. Is the president kind of trying to redefine the boundary here?
GERGEN: Well, that's certainly what the press believes. The press secretary, Scott McClellan, in the White House was pummeled yet again today. It's been like four or five straight days in a row now. The reporters asking him, listen, hasn't the president changed the standard? Hasn't he made -- hasn't he raised the bar or raised the threshold on which someone was fired? And if you look at the impression the White House left some time ago, it was, anybody involved with discrediting Mrs. Wilson would be fired. Now they have raised it, anyone involved in a crime will be fired. And that seems to be a much higher standard.
I have to tell you, Heidi, based on everything we know now, I see no evidence that Karl Rove has committed a crime. But he certainly was involved in the effort to discredit Mrs. Wilson, and that's clearly why the president may have raised the bar.
COLLINS: Wayne, let me ask you now. Several prominent Democrats have called on the president to fire Karl Rove. You followed their relationship, I know, for years. Would that ever happen?
WAYNE SLATER, AUTHOR, "BUSH'S BRAIN": No. That almost is impossible to happen. And I think David makes a good point. If, in fact, the governor -- the president did today change the standard, and it appears that he did, so that anyone who broke the law would be fired, anyone who didn't break the law wouldn't be fired, then Karl is safe.
This man, George Bush, and his counselor, Karl Rove, go back 15, 20 years. That family's been very close. Karl was instrumental in the entire political rise of George Bush. George Bush not only respects him, but he needs him in the Oval Office. Inside the Oval Office, Karl Rove is not just a part of the inner circle; he is the inner circle. And I think Bush made it clear today that if anything happens, it has to be a disaster before he would ever throw this guy overboard.
COLLINS: David, in this week's "Time" magazine, reporter Matt Cooper, as we've been talking about, actually detailed his testimony before the grand jury investigating the leak. And he wrote this, "Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes, did Rove say that she worked at the 'agency' on WMD? Yes."
This contrasts, now, earlier statements made by the White House that Rove was not involved. Is this damaging to the White House's credibility?
GERGEN: Yes. And I think we're starting to see some evidence in the poll now. ABC has a poll out tonight which says that it's now starting to take its toll. There was a Wall Street Journal NBC poll out late last week saying that the president's credibility overall was much lower than what we've seen in the past. It wasn't directly tied to this question.
But I think that the White House -- I do not think the White House has a criminal problem on its hands. I think it has a credibility problem, but that goes to the issue of governance. As Wayne can tell you, George W. Bush has great political strength for so many years has been that people think he's a straight shooter. He's respected in Texas for that reason. And he's a plain-spoken man. And he's respected in Washington for that reason.
And for that to be tarnished, is taking a toll on the president. I think for the first time we now see a dangerous cloud over the White House. It appears, Heidi, that the White House is going to accelerate the naming of a Supreme Court, or the nomination of a Supreme Court justice. It was going to come toward the end of the month. And now the "Washington Post" is reporting it may come this week.
If the White House does that, it may well be that their political hope is that they will wipe this story out of the news for a while. And that Karl Rove will then be much safer as a political matter.
COLLINS: In fact, Wayne, I know you've written something, quite a bit, actually, about, something called the mark of Rove. Can you quickly tell us about what that is?
SLATER: Essentially, the entire pattern of Karl Rove's involvement with political candidates, with George Bush, and with Republican candidates before George Bush has been essentially the same. Something bad happens to Karl Rove's rivals or opponents, and something good happens to his clients. Sometimes it's dirty tricks. Sometimes it's just good hardball politics.
And I have to say, there's a lot of Rovenfreud (ph) out there, a lot of feeling from those people who have found themselves in the cross hairs, Karl Rove's crosshairs, over the years. That he now may be getting his come-uppance. I think probably that there was wishful thinking at this point if there is no legal problem.
COLLINS: Wayne Slater, appreciate your time tonight, as well as you David Gergen. Gentleman, thank you.
Erica Hill joining us once again from HEADLINE NEWS with a cross- country look at some of the day's other top stories.
HILL: In an arrangement worked out with island authority, the FBI will test strands of blonde hair found on a piece of duct tape on a beach in Aruba, where police are still investigating the disappearance of an Alabama teenager, Natalee Holloway, last seen at the end of May. Tests on that hair will also be done in Aruba.
All eyes on New York, literally. The metropolitan transit authority will soon begin installing surveillance cameras in all East River tunnels and several other undisclosed locations. The plan, as you mention, has been in the works for at least a year.
In Washington, the justice department. Asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn an appeals court ruling that concerns big tobacco. That ruling prevents the government from seeking up to $280 billion in tobacco industry profits for an alleged long-running conspiracy to hide the truth of smoking dangers. The appeals court ruled the government could not use the federal Rico Racketeering Law to seek such a large penalty.
And, at the White House, a glittering dinner tonight. The first of Mr. Bush's second term, only the fifth of his presidency. It is an honor of India's visiting prime minister Manmohan Singh and his wife. Basmati rice and lotus blossoms were on the menu. Elephants made of fresh mums and roses were on the silk saffron cloth-covered tables. And that is making me hungry. I'm a big fan of indian food.
COLLINS: I'm glad the elephants, though, were only on the table cloths and not actually there in the room. Frightening. All right. Erica Hill, thanks so much. We'll see you again a little later on.
360 next now. A botox shocker. You won't believe where people are getting the cosmetic injections and why.
Also tonight, is this guy nuts? He took a great leap over the Great Wall of China, and he ended up with broken bones and a big paycheck. He stops by to tell us about his amazing feet.
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COLLINS: Daredevils. We know what they do. But, what we don't get, is why? For them, danger isn't a warning, it's an invitation that can often lead to disaster. In a moment, we'll meet the dare devil who just leaped over the Great Wall of China. But first, a look at a very hazardous and peculiar profession.
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COLLINS (voice over): In 1908, a handcuffed Harry Houdini jumped off the Harbor Bridge and into the chilly Charles River. He survived unharmed, and started a career as the most famous escape artist of all time. But he wasn't the first, and won't be the last to see the marketing allure of extremely dangerous feats.
Take the Flying Wallendas. They faced a high-flying danger on the family plan, performing their famous seven-person, three-tiered pyramid. When that pyramid collapsed in 1962, two Wallendas died, another was paralyzed.
But that didn't keep family Patriarch Karl Wallenda on the ground. The then 73-year-old who insisted on working without a net, took a deadly tumble from a high wire in San Juan in 1978.
Remember Philip Petit? He walked across Niagara Falls in 1986, and from the Tracadero to the Eiffel Tower in 1989. But his most famous walk in 1974 was the 130 feet between the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York.
Then, there were the Knievels, father and son. In 1968, dad, Evel Knievel, jumped the fountains at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, and shattered his pelvis, fractured his hip, smashed a femur, and spent a month in a coma. His son, Robby, followed his father's path to glory, as well as the E.R.
Besides big contracts he sustained broken legs, ankles, wrists, ribs, and thumbs, all for his, uh, challenging stunts.
And now, there's Danny Way, super skate border. Now famous for flying over the Great Wall of China on his board, not once, but five times. In his quest for the record book, fame, and maybe money. It may be an amazing feet, but when you get a look at some of his landing, you'll understand why they call it extreme.
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COLLINS (on camera): And with us now is the one and only Danny Way, the skate boarder who jumped the Great Wall of China. I'm so glad you're here with us in one piece at this point. You limped a little bit coming up here, but, I have to ask you. We know that you've broken your neck. You've had something like seven surgeries on your knees, there are a lot of people who just want to say, are you nuts?
DANNY WAY, JUMPED OVER THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA: I get asked that every day.
COLLINS: Every day.
WAY: Every day. And I ask myself every day, too: Why do you want to go out and put yourself at harm or put yourself at risk? And it's just a pure passion and love for what I do and it's all that I know and I've been doing it since I've been a little kid.
So, for me, it's just a progression and some people don't see the progression. They just see the jump over the wall and they're like: This guy's out of his mind. But it's taken quite a few years to get prepped for that. You know? COLLINS: You'd grant that you've got to be a little tiny bit off though, right?
WAY: I think it's a balance between being a little tiny off and like, finding the reality and kind of finding a happy medium.
COLLINS: All right. Well, let's go ahead and take a look at this first jump now. We are looking at it here behind us. This is the first one. You are hanging on to the board. You've got to hang on to that. Looks good so far. Tell me what we're seeing.
WAY: Well, you know, on a skateboard there's no brakes...
COLLINS: That's where it gets bad.
WAY: And I'd rather build a ramp at the bottom where I could try and disperse some of my speed, than actually put like a wall of hay bail or a wall of something to run into.
So, that's exactly what you are seeing here. It was: I built a quarter pipe. I was hoping to have the speed to break the record, which I currently hold already on the vertical height out of a quarter -- or a half pipe, which is 23.5 feet.
COLLINS: Yes. But that wasn't even your worst fall. Maybe we should take a look, if you can bare it, at the practice run. This was even worse. Let's take a look at this now.
WAY: This is -- Yes, this was the practice run. I hurt my ankle quite substantially right there.
COLLINS: I would imagine.
WAY: I though it was broken and got home and had it X-rayed and found that it wasn't.
COLLINS: It was not.
All right. Well, we're looking at one other jump here. You finally, after that, have the hang of it, even spinning -- after they fix you up here -- spinning a little bit in midair as you cross that wall. Describe the feeling when you knew: Hey, I think I finally got this down.
WAY: I mean -- looking at it before, you know, the first jump where I hurt myself the day before this, you know, I knew I could do it. There was some variables that I really -- you typically -- or don't need to be aware of, which I figured out later, could have been the reason why the first day I came up a little short of the landing ramp.
Because of all the math -- you know, I felt the math was correct on this ramp. I've used other ramp designs in the past to give me formula to build this one. The first jump I came up a little short and I figured out that air density -- it's really humid there and where I practice it's really dry and hot and I just didn't feel like I had the speed. But you know...
COLLINS: So parents, this is what we can tell our kids to use their math for -- right?.
WAY: Math is becoming a very serious factor in what I'm doing these days and I mean, I never would have thought that, you know, math equations would have been the deciding factor in my, you know, career.
COLLINS: Danny Way, once again, I have say: We're glad to see you in one piece. Pretty incredible stunt.
WAY: I'm glad to be in one piece and I'm glad to have this opportunity to be on this show and to exploit skate boarding in such a positive fashion.
COLLINS: So nice to meet you. Thanks again, Danny.
WAY: Thank you.
COLLINS: And let's find out now what's coming up at the top of the hour on "PAULA ZAHN NOW." Paula, you're going to go do this -- right?
PAULA ZAHN, HOST, "PAULA ZAHN NOW": Yes. But what I was going to say: The smartest thing about what he does is wears a helmets, so he can talk about mathematical equations.
Coming up at the top of the hour -- seven minutes from now: The man who's taking mega-church to a whole new level. Over weekend, Pastor Joel Osteen moved his flock into a 16,000-seat former pro basketball arena. The place was packed. What is he doing right and why are his critics taking him on. Are they jealous?
I'm going to be joined by the Paster Joel Osteen and his wife Valerie and we hope you will, too. It's an amazing sight. He had four services this week; packed every single one of them.
COLLINS: I bet he did. All right. Paula Zahn, we'll look forward to that. Thanks.
ZAHN: Thank you.
COLLINS: 360 next: Oh, the creative ways to use Botox. You won't believe where some women want it and why.
And tomorrow, actor Jude Law says he's ashamed for cheating on his fiancee. Why is it that some guys just can't stay faithful? We'll take a look at the reasons behind infidelity.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COLLINS: If there's one thing American can't get enough, of it's Botox. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, the number of Botox injections last year jumped 166 percent. This summer, rich and fashionable women continue to turn to a so-called wonder drug and it has nothing to do with looking younger. Here to explain the strange and private new uses for Botox is Dr. Howard Sobel. He's a dermatologist here in New York. Thanks for being with us. We're talking about actually using Botox now: noses, ears, breasts. how does this work?
DR. HOWARD SOBEL, DERMATOLOGIST: Well, we all lose out the gravity as we get older. You know, what happens is our skin -- we lose elasticity in our skin and the way Botox works: It decreases contractility of the muscles. When your muscle contracts, your skin wrinkles on itself. When we were younger, we had better elasticity in the skin. The skin always wrinkled on itself, but when we were younger, it didn't wrinkle as much.
COLLINS: But I also hear that there are people who are using this because they think they sweat too much. Now this is new.
SOBEL: Well, this is quite new. But it works terrifically. The same way it works on muscles to make them not contract so the skin doesn't wrinkle, it -- the same substance contains acetal coli (ph) a neurotransmitter -- it actually stops the sweat gland from secreting the fluid.
COLLINS: But there's actually a real medical condition that we should be clear about called Hyperhidrosis -- right? Which is excessive sweating. The FDA approved Botox for this use, but for the average person, who like i said, thinks they just sweat too much, is this really wise for them to do?
SOBEL: Well, a lot of people sweat and they use an antiperspirant. You've all shaken someone's hand and after at some point, you look -- Yikes! in terms of they are sweating so much underneath their armpits, their soles of their feet
COLLINS: OK.
SOBEL: And along with that, OK, when you sweat a lot, you absorb bacteria and that's why you use an antiperspirant, because it comes along with an odor, as well.
COLLINS: OK. So, there's also women asking for Botox -- you know what I'm going to say next, right? --- in extremely private area. Why could would a person want to do that and how necessary is it really?
SOBEL: Well, we all know with Botox typical areas. For the frown lines, the crow's feet for the forehead. Now, we started using them in the neck area. For people as they get older -- they had cords on their neck and you can at some point put off a face-lift for a while.
COLLINS: But that's not a private area.
SOBEL: That's not a private area. A private area would be -- OK, say, the breast area -- that you can inject underneath the breast, you can actually make the breasts lift slightly. You actually cause better posture and when you do that, the breasts lift slightly up. You also inject in private areas in terms of some people have increased sweating in the groin area. You can actually make the sweat glands decrease sweating in that area as well and decrease odor as well, so you don't get accumulation of sweat.
COLLINS: And the nose as well?
SOBEL: In the nose loses, we lose out to gravity. We can inject underneath the nose and we can actually -- we stop the muscle that pull down the nose and so, by doing that, you release the muscle and the nose is slightly elevated.
COLLINS: Wow. All right. Well, Dr. Howard Sobel, we appreciate your time here tonight. Thanks a lot.
SOBEL: Thank you.
COLLINS: I'm Heidi Collins in for Anderson Cooper tonight. CNN's primetime coverage continues now with Paula Zahn. Hi, Paula.
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